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40th AEA Conference – Living through change: the archaeology of human-environment interactions

Friday, November 29, 2019 to Sunday, December 1, 2019 University of Sheffield

40th Conference of the Association for Environmental Archaeology

University of Sheffield, 29th November – 1st December 2019

Living through change: the archaeology of human-environment interactions

As environmental archaeologists we recognise that human activity can impact local and regional environments, and, conversely, that dynamic environments can stimulate responses in human behaviour. The role of humans as agents of environmental change is increasingly central to debates far beyond our discipline and, given current global politics and the present threats of environmental change, it is more important than it has ever been for environmental archaeology to contribute powerful, vivid and evidence-based accounts of human-environment interactions from the deep and recent past. At the forefront of the study of past human-environment relationships, environmental archaeologists are keenly placed to explore what it means to live through long- and short-term environmental change.

The 40th conference of the Association for Environmental Archaeology will provide an opportunity to reflect on the discipline’s past, and debate its future in the context of growing bodies of data, the integration of multiple proxies for change, new analytical techniques and fresh theoretical paradigms. We welcome papers that explore environmental change from the human perspective through engagement with questions of change, adaptation, sustainability and human impact. We welcome papers from across the breadth of the discipline, including – but not limited to:

Human-induced changes to landscapes and environments at all scales

Human response to anthropogenic and natural environmental change

Sustainability and adaptability in changing environments

Environment as a driver of economic and/or socio-political change

The past as a proxy and model for future human-environment interactions

The Anthropocene and other conceptual paradigms

The contribution of environmental archaeology to policy-making and public engagement